Systems for conveying articles are deployed in a wide variety of applications. For example, in airports, conveyors are provided for security screening purposes. These conveyors are typically simplistic, in that they are designed solely for moving luggage and other articles in a conveyance direction through an x-ray scanning device. The entrance to the x-ray scanning device is of a limited size in a direction transverse to the direction of conveyance. Accordingly, if an article is larger in the direction transverse to the direction of conveyance than the size of the entrance to the x-ray scanning device, the article will get “jammed” in the entrance, preventing it and further upstream articles from being fed through the x-ray scanning device.
One technique for preventing articles from getting jammed in the entrance of an x-ray scanning device is to set the size of the conveyor leading to the x-ray scanning device to the same size as the entrance of the x-ray scanning device. Although this may reduce many jams, it may make it difficult for travelers, who would have to carefully place articles which are very close to the maximum size of the conveyor, onto the conveyor. Because travelers accompany their articles through the security screening area, and the area is operated by a large number of airport and/or security employees, airports typically provide wide conveyors leading into the x-ray scanning device (to ease the burden on travelers placing the articles on the conveyors), and rely upon the travelers and airport and/or security employees to reorient articles which jam the entrance of the x-ray scanning devices.
Conveyors and x-ray scanning devices are also used in airports for articles checked with airlines (“checked baggage”). Because of the large volume of checked baggage and the time demands to get the checked baggage onto airplanes, it is particularly desirable to reduce jamming of checked baggage.
Although the conveyor systems described above may provide adequate techniques for preventing and/or correcting articles from jamming x-ray scanning entrances, it would be desirable to reduce the reliance on human-intervention to reorient articles.